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Posted Sep 19, 2017 by Suzie Ford

Automaton Games, an indie British studio, has announced that it has scored $10M in funding to bring a "cutting-edge MMO tactical shooter" to the world. The new game is using Improbable's SpatialOS technology and the CryEngine to bring the as-yet untitled game to life. According to the dev team, the multiplayer survival combat MMO will feature a "last man standing" PvP mode that will see up to 400 players taking part.

Other features of the game include:

1,000 concurrent players in a shared world

12km x 12km explorable maps with dynamic environmental effects

character progression, social hubs, and a "global-scale player-driven narrative"

"Unprecedented world simulation and effects, including environmental destruction, roaming wildlife, dynamic weather, foliage displacement, tracks, blood trails, fire and water effects, fully immersing players into the experience of being the hunter - or the hunted."

Using SpatialOS, development and operation of the game takes place in the "cloud" allowing the team "to exceed the power of a single game engine or server".

"We've spent the last two years building the technology for a next-generation massively multiplayer online game that requires an entirely new approach to game design and development,” James Thompson, CEO of Automaton, commented. “This project delivers an unprecedented fidelity and scale of world simulation, and complex interactions between authored and player-driven content.

“I'm hugely excited that our next step is deploying this $10m investment to bring the game to launch in 2018. SpatialOS was an extremely natural fit for the platform on which to build our world simulation, since its paradigm fits squarely with the approaches we have taken to design a huge, dynamic virtual world, and we’re extremely excited to showcase what we’ve been able to achieve together in the coming year."